The present invention relates to memory sense amplifiers and more particularly to differential sense amplifiers.
The sensitivity of differential sense amplifiers is related to the difference is the bias potential applied to the two input terminals of the sense amplifier. As the difference is made smaller the sense amplifier can sense smaller read signals on sense lines coupled to the terminals. However, the danger in making the voltage difference between the two input terminals of the sense amplifier very small is that the sense amplifier will also be sensitive to background noise on the sense lines. Techniques have been developed in which a gating device isolates a critically balanced sense amplifier from the sensing lines until the read operation is to be performed. This technique is some times referred to as strobing. While strobing does desensitize the amplifier, it requires the use of an additional clocking signal to provide the sense amplifier with the desired noise immunity.